624=355 
Practical Agriculture. 
Fish. 
Seaweed. 
Composts. 
Durable appli- 
cations. 
Boning. 
Rape-cake. 
Marlins;. 
In parts of some counties lying close to the sea, sprat 
mussels, and star-fish are put into mixens with earthy and vegi 
table matters, and form an exceedingly rich and fertilising con 
post. The cost of sprats is usually about lOrf. a bushel ; 5 
or 60 bushels per acre being applied when used alone as 
dressing for wheat. Star-fish, or " five fingers," are about bd. 
bushel, and are applied at the rate of about 120 bushels per acr 
Mussels are generally bought by the waggon-load for aboi 
20s., and 150 bushels are put on per acre. 
Seaweed, on some coasts, is collected in considerable quai 
titles, and either applied to the land in its wet or green stat 
or, which is the better method, made into a compost in tl 
manure-heap. 
Composts made on the farm are of many kinds ; one of tl 
commonest being night-soil with ashes or earth, sometimes i 
combination with poultry or pigeon manure, dried and preparf 
for the drill by admixture with the ashes of earth, root-weed 
ditch-parings, &c., burned in the cleansing fires of the fallo 
season. 
Bone-dust, between layers of farmyard-dung, is also a ve 
valuable compost. But road-scrapings, pond-mud, and all tl 
products from scouring outfalls and tidying up corners and cc 
lecting rubbish are made available in conjunction with liqu 
drainings of the straw-yard. 
Among applications of a durable character are* bones ( 
pastures, rape-cake, lime, chalk, marls of various kinds, she 
sand, and clay. From 1 to 2 tons of crushed bones per acre a 
applied to the clay pastures of dairy-farms in Cheshire, also 
Staffordshire, and some other counties, at a cost of 11. to K 
per acre. The results in improvement of the herbage and great 
richness of the milk are remarkable, and the effect is mo 
immediate from boiled bones (from glue and size factories) th; 
from fresh ones. Rape-cake or rape-dust, either worked in 
the soil for roots, or applied in moist weather as a top-dressii 
on wheat, acts beneficially for several years, — besides being foun 
to be, partially at any rate, an antidote to wire-worm. 
In olden times great trust was placed in the manurial value 
those unctuous earths, the various kinds of marl, as testified 
the old disused marl-pits in many counties. The practice is 
limited in the present day ; being resorted to in some light-Ia;i 
districts for improving the texture and quality of the soil, ai 
repeated at intervals of many years. Thus, red land and rl 
soils in Lincolnshire are dressed with 40 cart-loads per .k 
of white or blue marl, the effect lasting for a long series of yea 
And in Norfolk, the marling or claying of friable and lig 
